Bar­ry Jenk­ins: ​‘Peo­ple of colour have been look­ing into the eyes of white peo­ple forever’

When you’ve been through the mill of Acad­e­my Awards press lob­by­ing, a once-open and out­spo­ken artist can become cagey and dis­tant. Jour­nal­ists sud­den­ly become attack dogs with an ulte­ri­or motive, and one tiny slip-up can cause the entire house of cards to tum­ble. Not so with Bar­ry Jenk­ins, win­ner of the 2017 Best Pic­ture Oscar for his ambi­ent Flori­da-set trip­tych, Moon­light, which is based on a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney. When it comes to pick­ing apart the fin­er points of art – his art, and art made by oth­ers – he’s ready to dive in deep.

We first encoun­tered Jenk­ins at the 2009 Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val, where his delight­ful debut fea­ture, Med­i­cine for Melan­choly, played, and he was also involved in a pan­el dis­cus­sion which explored the ques­tion What is Indie Cin­e­ma? His lat­est work is an adap­ta­tion of James Baldwin’s 1974 nov­el ​‘If Beale Street Could Talk’, about a young black woman who dis­cov­ers she’s preg­nant soon after her boyfriend is framed for rape by a racist cop he dared to stand up to.

All three of his films offer a brac­ing counter-nar­ra­tive to the sto­ries of black Amer­i­cans we so often see depict­ed on screen, par­tic­u­lar­ly those by white direc­tors. We spoke about how close­ly his film work dove­tails with the nov­els and essay work of James Bald­win, the essen­tial, visu­al aspects of cin­e­ma, and whether there’s an ele­ment of activism to his work.

LWLies: Can you describe your first encounter with the work of James Baldwin?

Jenk­ins: I was going through a break up. The woman break­ing up with me at the time, as a way of illus­trat­ing to me that I need­ed to grow as a per­son and as a man, rec­om­mend­ed that I read Bald­win. For me it was ​‘Giovanni’s Room’ and ​‘The Fire Next Time’. It was just shock­ing. I had nev­er know­ing­ly read the work of a queer author. I had cer­tain­ly nev­er read the work of a black queer author. To read ​‘Giovanni’s Room’, which is a black gay man writ­ing about a white gay bi man in Paris – that was insane. But it opened up my world­view. And it was love­ly to research Bald­win and realise that this guy came from the same place I did. This is how big my voice can be. Or how wide-rang­ing my expe­ri­ence can be.

When you were read­ing those books, did you already have that film­mak­er mindset?

No. Not at all. This hap­pened just before I got into film school. And I’m glad it hap­pened that way. Maybe if I’d been at film school for three years, grad­u­at­ed and then read Bald­win, I would’ve tried to adapt ​‘Giovanni’s Room’ before I made Med­i­cine for Melan­choly. Which would’ve been a fuck­ing dis­as­ter. I was so moved by the writ­ing, it nev­er occurred to me to take my voice and align it with his. This was some­thing that exist­ed out­side my own artis­tic pur­suits. It was much more about me being a cer­tain way. It was about five years after Med­i­cine, and I had this love for Bald­win, and I thought, ​‘Oh, dum­my, you should take this thing you do and this man you admire so much and put them together.’

If you, for what­ev­er rea­son, weren’t able to make Beale St, would you have gone to anoth­er novel?

If I’d gone to the estate and they’d said I couldn’t do ​‘Beale St’, then I would’ve tried to adapt ​‘Giovanni’s Room’. That’s my favourite Bald­win nov­el – visu­al­ly, it’s the one that acti­vates me the most despite the fact that it’s a cham­ber piece. But I was already work­ing on Moon­light. Not that it’s the same thing, but there’s def­i­nite­ly some elec­tric spir­i­tu­al cur­rent shared between them. When I was tour­ing with Moon­light, I sud­den­ly realised that I had ref­er­enced the first two Bald­win books I had ever read. There you go. Maybe I would’ve decid­ed on some­thing else completely.

[In this sec­tion of the inter­view we read out three archive quo­ta­tions relat­ing to the nov­el ​‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ and asked for Jenk­ins’ response to each.]

1. “‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ is Baldwin’s prison para­ble – a fic­tion­al­i­sa­tion of his prison con­cerns dur­ing the 1968 – 69 peri­od and the nat­ur­al illus­tra­tion and cul­mi­na­tion of his long med­i­ta­tion on psy­cho­log­i­cal emo­tion, and intel­lec­tu­al impris­on­ment.” David Leem­ing, ​‘James Bald­win: A Biography’

I would cer­tain­ly agree with that descrip­tion. The feel­ing of read­ing this book for the first time and decid­ing I want­ed to adapt it was the com­bi­na­tion of this essay­is­tic, almost protest nov­el ver­sion of Bald­win, and this very lush, sen­su­al and roman­tic ver­sion of Bald­win. And I think that dual­i­ty was some­thing I thought would be real­ly chal­leng­ing, visu­al­ly. The nov­el can be so mov­ing. That, to me, is what the book feels like.

2. ​“For every nov­el that I write, I am afraid. I try some­thing, which makes me doubt my capa­bil­i­ties as a writer. I know also that I have been lucky.” Guy Le Clec’h, ​‘James Bald­win à vis­age découvert’. Le Figaro Littéraire

It is some­thing I relate to, but not when I’m embark­ing on a project. Every­thing is so fresh and new. There’s so much pos­si­bil­i­ty. It’s as the movie is start­ing to cohere – some­times dur­ing pro­duc­tion, often­times in post-pro­duc­tion – that this feel­ing of fear starts to creep in. But with Bald­win, you have to unpack it a bit: he grew up in a time when being him­self was dan­ger­ous in a cer­tain way. For him to pub­lish ​‘Giovanni’s Room’, of course he must have been terrified.

In the same way with Moon­light, mak­ing that film, I was kind of like, ​‘What the fuck am I doing?’ This is not going to end well. And yet, if I’m not feel­ing that way, then I’m prob­a­bly not push­ing myself. I don’t mean phys­i­cal­ly, as in, ​‘Oh, this movie is so demand­ing’. Just as in, speak­ing about things that are uncom­fort­able to speak about, and show­ing things, hope­ful­ly truths, that are dif­fi­cult to digest. I think that’s the fear he’s talk­ing about. Espe­cial­ly this writer as, holy shit, all he did was tell the truth. Some very bit­ter, ugly truths, espe­cial­ly in this novel.

3. ​“If the eye is indeed the light to the soul, then James Bald­win lays many of his char­ac­ters bare in ​‘If Beale St Could Talk’ . The peo­ple in the nov­el, by look­ing at each oth­er – not just with casu­al glances, but with intense eye con­tact – reveal many of their sub­con­scious thoughts and feel­ings. On a super­fi­cial lev­el, they use eye con­tact to fight bat­tles that might require guns, knives and oth­er more phys­i­cal weapons.” Trudi­er Har­ris, The Eye as Weapon in If Beale Street Could Talk, MELUS, Vol­ume 5, Issue 3, 1 Sep­tem­ber 1978

I mean, that’s fuck­ing won­der­ful. I wish that was about the movie and not the book. In a cer­tain way, the quote doesn’t shock me. I do think Bald­win, in draw­ing these fam­i­lies in the way that he does, devel­ops a means of encour­ag­ing the audi­ence to look them in the eye. He wants the audi­ence to feel their expe­ri­ence. It’s no secret that Bald­win was some­body who loved cin­e­ma. My the­sis is that cin­e­ma is chan­nelled through the eyes.

The quote doesn’t sur­prise me, and it real­ly reflects some­thing that came from adapt­ing the book for the screen. James [Lax­ton, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er] start­ed doing these direct-to-cam­era shots in Moon­light, and it just felt like that aes­thet­ic would apply to Beale Street. Intel­lec­tu­al­ly, I’d nev­er put it togeth­er in quite this clear a lan­guage. But think­ing of the film now, it makes absolute sense. That is a love­ly quote.

LWLies: There’s an inter­est­ing sec­tion in Raoul Peck’s doc­u­men­tary, I Am Not Your Negro, where James Bald­win is talks about the film The Defi­ant Ones, In which fol­lows a white con­vict and a black con­vict who are chained togeth­er. He says that white and black audi­ences would see a dif­fer­ent film from one anoth­er. Do you feel that there are dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences to be had from the films you make?

Hmm, that’s a loaded ques­tion bruh! I’m going to cheat and say there are dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences to be had from any film. What you bring into the cin­e­ma will affect your rela­tion­ship with what’s on the screen. Regard­ing your Defi­ant Ones exam­ple, there are all these direct-to-cam­era shots in Moon­light and Beale Street, and a writer for the New York Times men­tioned them in a pro­file of me and the film. Her obser­va­tion about the direct-to-cam­era shots was shock­ing, because I had nev­er con­sid­ered it. She framed it in a way that, for a white audi­ence mem­ber sit­ting in the cin­e­ma, when Fon­ny is look­ing direct­ly at the cam­era, which is direct­ly at the audi­ence, it might be the first time they’ve every made eye con­tact in this way and for this amount of time. Then she said that, if you’re a per­son of colour, you’re prob­a­bly see­ing some­one you know.

I think the step beyond that relates to some­thing Arthur Jaffe says when he speaks about cin­e­ma, which is that peo­ple of colour have been look­ing into the eyes of white peo­ple for­ev­er. Through­out the his­to­ry of arts and let­ters. And that’s fine. I think they under­stand more about the expe­ri­ence of your every­day white per­son just from watch­ing sit­coms and movies all these years than they do about me. I make these films in a way that is not con­cerned with that dynam­ic. It’s more a con­tri­bu­tion to that idea of shar­ing that we’ve been forced to have, because for so long there was a dearth of mate­r­i­al we could see our­selves in. You had to see folks like you, for­ev­er. And now you guys get to come into the cin­e­ma and see folks like me.

Now, if I’d made the work with the dynam­ic implic­it in my inten­tions, I think the work would suf­fer. Then I’m doing you a dis­ser­vice. I’m show­ing you what I think you need to see as opposed to mak­ing the mate­r­i­al the way I feel it should be made. It’s about cre­at­ing a shared expe­ri­ence. And I hope that’s what all the white peo­ple have been doing with all the white char­ac­ters through­out the his­to­ry of the world. They haven’t been think­ing about me. But when I go and watch the movie, I’m allowed access to that experience.

When you’re writ­ing about film, it’s some­times easy to take these for­mal ele­ments for grant­ed. But there’s so much to be dis­cov­ered from con­sid­er­ing the inten­tions behind shots rather than the shots themselves.

The for­mal ele­ments of film can’t be tak­en for grant­ed. The aes­thet­ics can’t be tak­en for grant­ed. There’s a crit­ic called Miri­am Bale, who’s also a friend, and she often says that the aes­thet­ic is polit­i­cal. You can’t sep­a­rate the aes­thet­ics from the pol­i­tics. Oth­er­wise they’re just sto­ries. And there’s a bet­ter for­mat for sto­ries than cin­e­ma. There just is. It’s lit­er­a­ture. You can get into the inte­ri­or lives of char­ac­ters. There are no lim­i­ta­tions on the imag­i­na­tion. But it’s not cin­e­ma. In cin­e­ma, the sto­ry is one thing and the aes­thet­ics are this whole oth­er thing. These two things work hand in hand, but the aes­thet­ics aren’t there just to serve the sto­ry. They have a point of their own. They are both the tool and the method. They are the metaphor. Cin­e­ma is not just telling damn stories.

If the aes­thet­ic is always polit­i­cal, does that make you an artist and an activist?

No, I don’t see myself as an activist. There’s a lev­el of ded­i­ca­tion and sac­ri­fice in activism that I can’t accept. Espe­cial­ly because the works I’m most known for are adap­ta­tions. Tarell Alvin McCraney is an activist. James Bald­win is an activist. I’m just a guy who makes things. But I’m thank­ful that the things I’ve made mean some­thing in the world at large.

Maybe you’re an activist by proxy?

Exact­ly. But seri­ous­ly, no, I’m not. I thought you were going to go in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion with that artist ques­tion. You men­tioned the terms artist and activist. There’s that piece near the end of Beale Street where Fon­ny says, ​‘I’m an arti­san. I nev­er liked the word artist. Sure as fuck don’t know what it means.’ I feel the same way.

How do you differentiate?

Part of that is wrapped up in what I said in my Oscars speech: grow­ing up in a way where I didn’t con­sid­er myself becom­ing an artist. I didn’t know the way I came into film­mak­ing. I didn’t realise how much actu­al machin­ery is involved in the mak­ing of films. We had a pro­fes­sor who used to refer to film­mak­ers as ​‘blue col­lar artists’. Which, to me, is just an arti­san. If I real­ly unpack it, it’s just about self doubt. It’s fun­ny talk­ing about this in the UK, where class is embed­ded in your cul­ture. Through a clas­sist prism, the idea of me being an artist is just a step beyond.

As I get old­er and make more things, it’s a bit of a cop out. And shit, I’m going back to the pre­vi­ous ques­tion now, but I made it seem as though only activists bare respon­si­bil­i­ty, and before that, how the aes­thet­ics are always polit­i­cal. So I think, if I’m real­ly adding every­thing up, then maybe I am an activist in a cer­tain way. Not by proxy, but in my heart. Fuck, you man. Don’t print that.

If Beale Street Could Talk is released 8 Feb­ru­ary. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.